Ethan Dodd – Visual Artist. Cardiff, Wales

May 26, 2015

Definition and Growth of concept

Recently, I have been more concerned with contextual growth within my own practice; Visiting exhibitions, researching within the library, as well as attempting to find meaning for the tumours that I have been creating for such an extended period of time. I seemed to have hit a wall; work was not meaning anything to me anymore. It was more concerned with the process of making, and seemed to have lost touch with the initial meditative and reflective properties that it was once associated with. In lieu of this, I attended a series of workshops in The University of Wales Hospital based on the Heart. I was invited along by Chris Glynn, The head of Illustration here at Cardiff Metropolitan University, as he had forgotten about me on a drawing trip to the Morgue, which annoyed me a great deal. Nevertheless, I went along to this workshop and although did not find much use within some of the areas of he experience, I found a certain part of the evening very interesting. When returning to a room where we all met for one final discussion, I returned a little early and began to talk to a Russian Biology graduate about my artwork. We spoke about Cancer, and the effect it has had on our lives and families; he had lost his mother, and I had lost a few members myself. As we spoke, and I talked about the reasons for my chosen mediums, I found myself rambling ever so slightly as I felt that I had lost touch with what it meant for me, as a body of work.However, there was a sentence that escaped my lips, and it suddenly all made sense;

‘I think, what i’m trying to do, is utilise the porcelain as flesh, as skin, as some form of scapegoat for my own fears and worries. I feel that, if I remove them from my being, then I can better come to terms with them. It’s almost like voodoo, or some other form of pagan belief; the illness transfers from me, into these objects. By utilising the laser to implant the ‘tumour” into the objects, I am symbolically ‘blood letting’ my anxiety; ‘Fear letting’, so to speak.’

I’ve realised that my work holds a very personal angle, often influenced by what I have seen and felt, and is almost self centred. I don’t want my work to be determined to be such a way. Many successful contemporary artists create works that are universal in scope, and thus, can be understood and experienced by everyone. I feel like my work, though touching on large, well understood concepts, focuses too much on my innate experience as a human being; at times putting a spiritual barrier up between e and the viewer, and prompting them to not understand the concepts surrounding it. Which I find quite strange, and a little annoying. The artist as shaman, the artist as mystic, the artist as medium…these are all ideas explored within my work, and through exploration of my artworks, I hope to expel the disease of fear from within, and hopefully, others.